the chairperson of a government committee mandated to look into Kerala's endosulfan tragedy suppressed all dissenting voices within the committee to give a clean chit to the pesticide. A look at the final report of the Dubey committee, submitted in March 2003 and kept away from public scrutiny (marked "for office use only'), reveals that repeatedly expressed disagreements of key committee members were ignored. Chairperson O P Dubey, also the assistant director general, Indian Council of Agriculture Research, quite understandably, found support from endosulfan industry representatives within the committee.

The report includes no separate dissent note. At least three members' apprehensions about endosulfan have just been included in the form of a letter they wrote to Dubey. The final stand-off between industry representatives and dissenters took place in the committee's fourth and final meeting on February 14, 2003, at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi.

At this meeting, Dubey read out the draft conclusions and recommendations that apparently gave a clean chit to endosulfan. At this stage itself, a few members disagreed with the draft. Down To Earth (DTE) had exposed how these recommendations were based on manipulated and fraudulent reports and that the assumptions were completely erroneous (see dte,